Three jeeps, filled with mostly young and idealistic Westerners and driven by
former Special Forces members, are going along the mine fields between Syria and
Israel. They arrive to an abandoned Syrian hospital, with some soldiers in front
of it. They go up to the rooftop, through the crumbling hospital, carefully
going up staircases that have been bombed. Once they get up, their tour guide
says "See that building 300 meters away? There's an Al-Qaeda sniper looking at
you from there! Don't worry, if he wanted you dead, he'd have shot you a long
time ago.".

After feeling a bit down under at home, I decided to go places again. Because I
haven't seen my good friend Alida in a long
time, I decided to go to Paris again. And this time not just for an
afternoon. It made me feel un­com­fort­ably
excited to have something in­ter­est­ing to do.

Because flying, with security checks and everything, is not much faster than the
train, I took the latter. It's really nice to go with the TGV, to see all the
cars whizzing by on the highway. But the numbering of the train cars was
in­ter­est­ing: it was decreasing from 8 to 1, then you had …continue.